Founder
“I learn so many emergent strategies from the water and the lifeforms in the water. She teaches me lessons that I can apply on land. She teaches me to breathe, to slow down and to take my time. She doesn’t ever care how I look, or sound. With her, she holds me. I am weightless. I am boundless.”
Jess Brown
Jess Brown is a disrupter and cultural curator crafting spaces for critical conversations. Her work merges art, music, and design, using historical references, pop culture, humor and joy to tackle complex issues through a justice-centered lens. As a multi-hyphenate social impact designer, professor, Black futurist, Afro-cosmonaut explorer, Creative Connector, and mermaid, she makes ideas visible, solves problems through innovation, and champions equity with a life-centered approach.
Rooted in liberation theology- activism, organizing and truth telling are at the center of Jess Brown’s artistic practice. As an Aries through and through, the water has always been the necessary balance in her life. She cannot remember a time that she didn’t swim. Her parents made sure that she would have a comfortable relationship with the water. Her mother has always had a fear of the water and her father was a wonderful swimmer. With that, they made sure that she not only wouldn’t be afraid of the water, but that she would find joy in it.
She grew up fishing with her grandmother on the lakes of Ky. In highschool she was an Explorer Scout, going on water excursions, skiing, hiking and spelunking around Southern Ky and Northern Tn. In college she became a certifide lifeguard on duty at the campus pool and spending summers as a waterfront instructor at 4-H camp teaching canoeing, kayaking, and swimming on the lake. Water has always been her means of escaping the chaos, offering a contemplative and calming place to think and release.